Austria’s deliberately down-graded Eurofighters are to be retired prematurely, amid criticism of missing capabilities:
On 7 July 2017 Austria’s Social Democrat Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil announced that the Luftstreitkräfte (Austrian air force) would end operations of its fleet of 15 single-seat Tranche-1/Block-5/2R Eurofighters prematurely, some time between 2020-2023.
The Minister was quoted as saying that: “It was necessary to halt the overflowing costs of a Eurofighter which does not have the full capabilities needed for our sovereign air-surveillance. Subsequently we today announce that the Eurofighter in Austrian service is history!”
At the same press conference, Brigadier Karl Gruber, the commander of the Austrian air force melodramatically said that: “I want to be assured that my pilots are not sentenced to death, when in the future (they) may be meeting a defecting, renegade Su-27 and its pursuers...”
The impression given was that the Eurofighter was too expensive, and was inherently lacking in capability, and that the Tranche 1 version used by Austria was effectively obsolescent and might be difficult to support. The official Austrian Bundeswehr (armed forces) website described the Tranche 1 aircraft as having “limited equipment and significant cost uncertainty.”
Brigadier Gruber pointed out that the Tranche 1 version of the aircraft was only operated by the core member countries of the Eurofighter consortium — the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain – and that since those countries had “developed different concepts for the future,” he said. “it appears likely that there will be no uniform Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 1 system in the future.”
This is extremely misleading, since the Tranche 1 Eurofighter Typhoon remains one of the most capable and most effective air defence aircraft in service today, while with proper support arrangements, other operators are finding costs to be reasonable. Moreover, the UK RAF has recently delivered a real boost in the Tranche 1 aircraft’s long term future by committing to retain it in service until 2035, thereby ensuring that the type will be fully supported for at least another 18 years.
Furthermore any lack of capability in Austria’s Tranche 1 Eurofighter aircraft is very much restricted to the specific Austrian configuration, and is the direct result of ‘unique-to-Austria’ procurement decisions, which saw the Alpine nation order a version of the aircraft which quite deliberately lacked a number of key items of equipment, in a short-sighted attempt to shave cost from the programme.
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